Official 4BR Tier List V4 - Competitive Insight & Analysis

[Rizen]

Browser has better mix-ups, better hit for hit damage, better mobility, and overall slightly greater survivability.

How does Bowser have better mobility than DK? Bowser's jump squat is worse than every other character at frame 8. DK's air speed is 9th at 1.15, Bowser's is 31st at 1. Bowser does win run speed barely with 17th place 1.792 vs DK's 22nd 1.7031. DK's walk is 9th at 1.3 vs Bowser's 53rd at .858. Bowser can return down to the stage/ledge better with Dair/BBomb and Bowser's upB goes higher so it's not completely in DK's favor. But that js, man :/ DK>Bowser in mobility.

I agree with the other stuff.

 

[Kofu]

NINTENDO Galaxy what's the lowest damage PK Freeze can do? If it's 8% or more then Oil Panic is probably pretty close to a OHKO regardless.

 

[MarioManTAW]

With regard to the Doc/Kirby, Ness/Lucas, and DK/Bowser debates, I might suggest looking at http://ssbworld.com
According to each character's recorder win percentage, Kirby > Doc, Ness > Lucas, and DK > Bowser (and I agree with all 3).

 

[Shaya]

Hoping this is alright to ask, but I think someone pointed this out, I noticed a good deal of the voters were ones I recognized were from Japan, Eur. ,etc. out of NA in general, and I was wondering if this would be mentioned in the followup post, as well as how so many non-NA voters may have impacted the list, since WFT seems to have been impacted by it.

Your wording was a tad confusing, but we'll be showing what just a specific region's vote looked like, and one could extrapolate from there.

 

[Nu~]

Lol, imagine greninja running around with a marth fair. A forward facing aerial on a character that fast would absolutely suck for people who aren't Greninja.

Sheik had it for 2 1/2 years :,)

The night terrors still won’t go away T_T

 

[Y2Kay]

Sheik had it for 2 1/2 years :,)

The night terrors still won’t go away T_T

imagine it being a kill move with true combos tho -__-

 

[Deleted member]

So the main reasons for the Pits dropping so much is their lack of good results and a weak player base? They do have a good all around type of style and a great recovery. Pit is also not that bad at the match ups for a mid tier. Ah well.

 

[MH-Jin]

Sheik had it for 2 1/2 years :,)

The night terrors still won’t go away T_T

Maybe we need to petition for Sheik's 1.1.4 fair to come back >>

 

[Heracr055]

Pit is probably the most mediocre character in the game. He doesn't have any real polarizing options that even characters ranked below him possess. This lets him get janked out by characters above him that have a clutch option. Jack of all trades and a master of none in a huge roster.

 

[Lord Dio]

Pit is probably the most mediocre character in the game. He doesn't have any real polarizing options that even characters ranked below him possess. This lets him get janked out by characters above him that have a clutch option. Jack of all trades and a master of none in a huge roster.

This is true.
Pit is honest.

 

[Y2Kay]

I'm not gonna rant about how pit being an all rounder is a bold mistruth again.

 

[Laken64]

How does Bowser have better mobility than DK? Bowser's jump squat is worse than every other character at frame 8. DK's air speed is 9th at 1.15, Bowser's is 31st at 1. Bowser does win run speed barely with 17th place 1.792 vs DK's 22nd 1.7031. DK's walk is 9th at 1.3 vs Bowser's 53rd at .858. Bowser can return down to the stage/ledge better with Dair/BBomb and Bowser's upB goes higher so it's not completely in DK's favor. But that js, man :/ DK>Bowser in mobility.

I agree with the other stuff.

Bowser has a low skid animation (like ) when turning around so it gives him a strong footies game where he can constantly shift around and bait approaches and hit you with a safe ftilt or grab you for overcommitting, so he has an above average ground game with that alone plus with his pivot grab and spaced ftilt helping him out in the process.

 

[TDK]

Pit is a bait and punish character with bad baits and even worse punishes.

How do people think he's any good again?

 

[Y2Kay]

Pit does have very good baits. He has really low cool downs on his normals, just below the mario bros. Pit also has great juggling potential, ledge guarding, and edge guarding. His damage potential does not compete with characters like Fox and Bayo, but he does has some consistent BnB combos.

In the end, I feel Metaknight ultimately does what he wants to do better, with muc better damage potential. But Pit is by no means bad. I feel his spot on the tier list pretty accurate.

 

[|RK|]

You know... after hearing Dabuz talk about Rosa without Luma on stream, I'm starting to think that Smash 4's inconsistency comes from it's characters, not necessarily from other factors. Every top tier character has some huge strength balanced out by a grand and obvious weakness.

Sheik - struggles to close a stock, allowing for huge comebacks
Rosa - Success depends on whether Luma is around
Cloud - Doesn't recover sometimes
Fox - Doesn't get back to stage at all sometimes
ZSS - Everything involving her rage setups
Mario - Easily walled out
Mewtwo - The poster child for glass cannon
Ryu - Gets camped out hard

The only three top tiers I can't think of huge weaknesses like that for are Bayo, Diddy, and Marth. In that order too - Marth's disadvantage is very meh, Diddy's disadvantage is occasionally linear, and Bayo... sometimes has lag?

I get the idea of having some sort of weakness as a means to balance a game. But I don't recall any other game in the series having top tiers with weaknesses nearly as prevalent as their strengths. And I could be totally wrong about that, so people with more experience - please let me know. But from what I've seen, it looks like top tiers didn't have weaknesses nearly so exploitable in other games.

 

[Wintermelon43]

You know... after hearing Dabuz talk about Rosa without Luma on stream, I'm starting to think that Smash 4's inconsistency comes from it's characters, not necessarily from other factors. Every top tier character has some huge strength balanced out by a grand and obvious weakness.

Sheik - struggles to close a stock, allowing for huge comebacks
Rosa - Success depends on whether Luma is around
Cloud - Doesn't recover sometimes
Fox - Doesn't get back to stage at all sometimes
ZSS - Everything involving her rage setups
Mario - Easily walled out
Mewtwo - The poster child for glass cannon
Ryu - Gets camped out hard

The only three top tiers I can't think of huge weaknesses like that for are Bayo, Diddy, and Marth. In that order too - Marth's disadvantage is very meh, Diddy's disadvantage is occasionally linear, and Bayo... sometimes has lag?

I get the idea of having some sort of weakness as a means to balance a game. But I don't recall any other game in the series having top tiers with weaknesses nearly as prevalent as their strengths. And I could be totally wrong about that, so people with more experience - please let me know. But from what I've seen, it looks like top tiers didn't have weaknesses nearly so exploitable in other games.

What about Sonic? You never mentioned him.

 

[Emblem Lord]

So the main reasons for the Pits dropping so much is their lack of good results and a weak player base? They do have a good all around type of style and a great recovery. Pit is also not that bad at the match ups for a mid tier. Ah well.

No.

They are not good. That's why.

 

[|RK|]

What about Sonic? You never mentioned him.

Oh! Wow, totally missed him. Yeah, he has disadvantage, too. Maybe also lack of early kill power, if you consider that a weakness.

 

[Minordeth]

You know... after hearing Dabuz talk about Rosa without Luma on stream, I'm starting to think that Smash 4's inconsistency comes from it's characters, not necessarily from other factors. Every top tier character has some huge strength balanced out by a grand and obvious weakness.

Sheik - struggles to close a stock, allowing for huge comebacks
Rosa - Success depends on whether Luma is around
Cloud - Doesn't recover sometimes
Fox - Doesn't get back to stage at all sometimes
ZSS - Everything involving her rage setups
Mario - Easily walled out
Mewtwo - The poster child for glass cannon
Ryu - Gets camped out hard

The only three top tiers I can't think of huge weaknesses like that for are Bayo, Diddy, and Marth. In that order too - Marth's disadvantage is very meh, Diddy's disadvantage is occasionally linear, and Bayo... sometimes has lag?

I get the idea of having some sort of weakness as a means to balance a game. But I don't recall any other game in the series having top tiers with weaknesses nearly as prevalent as their strengths. And I could be totally wrong about that, so people with more experience - please let me know. But from what I've seen, it looks like top tiers didn't have weaknesses nearly so exploitable in other games.

Smash 4 has a familiar rotation of top players that generally get top 8 to top 16 depending on how many of them show up in a given tournament. The top level is moderately consistent.

However, I’ll throw out something else to consider about the Smash 4 meta and its consistency that takes a different angle:

Every character in this game has knowable attributes and interactions. The systems we have in the game, while occasionally obtuse, are also knowable.

I’d suggest the main issue we have is that our top players struggle with maintaining peak performance levels across all levels of competition. This is something that a competitor in anything needs to optimize. Easy example: look at LeBron James, he has ups and downs in individual games, but generally, he maintains a high level of performance across dozens of games under varying levels of pressure.

Recently, in the modern Smash community we have two examples of players who regularly achieve that high level of consistency: Armada and Hungrybox. Armada is notorious for his rigorous, systemic approach to practicing (also known as practicing in any other sport). Hungrybox seems to have pushed through some mental barriers and is now simply playing to win, every time, and everything else flows from there.

Smash 4 has one of the slowest metas I’ve seen. In part, this is due to the training mode being awful. In another part, we have a bunch of new adults that are all individually trying to figure out how to bridge the gap from amateur competitor to professional. And I mean that in terms of mentality.

There are solutions, of course, and they are fairly obvious (sort of), but that’s for another post.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

What about Sonic? You never mentioned him.

Okay-ish normals compared to the other top-tiers.

 

[Hat N' Clogs]

Oh! Wow, totally missed him. Yeah, he has disadvantage, too. Maybe also lack of early kill power, if you consider that a weakness.

I'm not a Sonic main, but from what I can tell, one weakness I can think of is that Sonic has trouble KOing opponents. From what I noticed, it can be hard to set up for the kill when playing as Sonic with the high end lag on his moves. This gives opponents more time to counter the move, and it just makes getting the KO riskier in general. I'm not sure if he has 50/50s, but if he does have 50/50s they certainly aren't on Sheik or Fox level. Even with improved knockback on moves from Brawl, he still has trouble KOing from what I can tell.

Concerning a significant weakness for Marth, I can only think of two things, which are relatively decent combo weight and linear recovery. If a character can get around the long sword and combo well (i.e. Sheik), Marth is in for a bad time. On the Sheik matchup, it doesn't help that Sheik's got great edgeguard tools. It's why she wins the matchup according to most.

 

[Yonder]

As someone who is slowly transitioning from Luigi to Sonic, I'd say projectiles that out prioritize Sonic really mess with his damage racking game plan in the form of charges. Sonic feels pretty versatile though.

And the reason why I'm losing faith in Luigi is because of one single, solitary reason. It's not because he's getting worse (in fact, I think he's on the rise) but because...I. Can't. Mash. No other character requires such a pivotal mashing skill. This isn't osmrting you can use muscle memory for, you literally have to have the mashing strength. I hear that Luigi mash requires tricep strength, and o work out 6 days a week. Elegant looks smaller than me,so does Concon. So what gives? The only way I can use mash inconsistency is mapping special to two buttons, but that changes my grab to something else, which screws me up bad.

Luigi with a Brawl level of tornado mashing would unlock a higher casual player base and in turn, rise to more Luigi players advancing his meta I bet. If Elegant stops playing Luigi, he will have quite the decline sadly.

 

[my_T]

Man people underestimate the hell outta Bowser.

Bowser not having a safe poke is yet another meme that's been floating around on this board for some time. His jab 1 is literally 2 frames safer than DK's dtilt. Bowsers disadvantage is noticeably better than DK's as well. Heavier weight, much better vertical recovery, better landing and ledge options thanks to side B, better OOS options thanks to up B, floaty so he doesn't get true combo'd as hard as DK.

@Lavani already mentioned a lot of other things that Bowser has over DK

Bowser has faster run speed, a shorter dash to shield, an air usable command grab that effectively always autocancels, unique physics that actually get him out of some combos, better OoS, much better recovery distance, and mostly better ground moves (jab is safer and has better frame advantage; ftilt is safer, kills much earlier, doesn't become weaker when tilted down to "2-frame", and doesn't have z-axis issues; dtilts differ greatly between the two, but they both have their purposes). I mentioned the better grab range previously, but it bears repeating that Tsu finds Bowser's pivot grab more difficult to play around than DK's as Lucario, and the combination of faster run speed and more actual range makes Bowser's dash grab that much better as well.

I don't think it's strictly that people say "oh they both pivot grab and (cargo) uthrow>uair they're the same character" so much as their other unique traits come down to playstyle preference or matchup rather than one strictly being better than the other.

Bowser is just as good as DK at worst but I can see him having the edge over DK since he has a better disadvantage and more kill power and options overall

And please don't bring up results, they're just not comparable. DK has far more rep at top level than Bowser as well as better attendance. Same goes for the Ness/Lucas debate.

 

[Rizen]

Man people underestimate the hell outta Bowser.

Bowser not having a safe poke is yet another meme that's been floating around on this board for some time. His jab 1 is literally 2 frames safer than DK's dtilt.

Bowser's jab 1 is -2 on shield drop. DK's Dtilt is -2 on shield drop. According to the linked thing.

 

[MercuryPenny]

Mario - Easily walled out

i don't think this is the problem he has, at least when it comes to being consistent. his struggle can be more compared to shiek since he has no consistent kill confirms, forcing him to rely on lucky smash attacks and sometimes offstage airdodge reads to kill before his opponent gets to max rage and resets to neutral.

he's also arguably more inconsistent than shiek due to not having her relentlessly safe options to play with in neutral and advantage...at least his disadvantage isn't quite as bad.

 

[FeelMeUp]

i don't think this is the problem he has, at least when it comes to being consistent. his struggle can be more compared to shiek since he has no consistent kill confirms, forcing him to rely on lucky smash attacks and sometimes offstage airdodge reads to kill before his opponent gets to max rage and resets to neutral.

he's also arguably more inconsistent than shiek due to not having her relentlessly safe options to play with in neutral and advantage...at least his disadvantage isn't quite as bad.

great observation
the true main issue with mario is the fact that he lets opponents live until 150-160+ regularly and doesn't have strong enough setups in the 90ish range. if you commit to holding center stage like your life depends on it and not committing to stupid dashes/jumps, it's impossible for him to kill you at reasonable percents.
being a relatively floaty midweight isn't good for him either, as this causes a lot of rage death setups to work superbly on his frame.
to make matters worse, he has a neutral significantly worse than cloud/sheik/diddy without the ridiculous approach and keepout options that they do.
**** sucks

 

[Deleted member]

No.

They are not good. That's why.

Pit does have very good baits. He has really low cool downs on his normals, just below the mario bros. Pit also has great juggling potential, ledge guarding, and edge guarding. His damage potential does not compete with characters like Fox and Bayo, but he does has some consistent BnB combos.

In the end, I feel Metaknight ultimately does what he wants to do better, with muc better damage potential. But Pit is by no means bad. I feel his spot on the tier list pretty accurate.

I'm not gonna rant about how pit being an all rounder is a bold mistruth again.

I am fine with Pit's placement for now, but I think he will just continue to lower in the tier list like Villager and Kirby. So basically Pit is just too mediocre to do anything good? I feel like I need to deep more into this thread. A lot said that Pit is an "all rounder". Is Pit not considered an all rounder because of his overall weak moves? Interesting, you are beginning to get my agreement. Pit is not good I guess.

 

[my_T]

Bowser's jab 1 is -2 on shield drop. DK's Dtilt is -2 on shield drop. According to the linked thing.

Bowsers jab 1 is still 2 frames safer in terms of end lag

 

[Bowserboy3]

Please Europe and South/Central America, give me your powers

I don't mean to be that guy but like...

What actual European input was given to this list?

There's Tru4, though as far as I know, he's in Australia now, so I don't think that really counts.

It'd be nice if the next tier list actually pulled some data from more of the world than being a majority of US and Japan. Again, there probably is in this list, but I am just not recognising any names, so if anyone can point more names out, please do so.

There are plenty of European players that travel around as well. Notables that travel around a fair bit that I can think of off the top of my head include Cyve, Gluttony, our own Aperture... Mr. R lol?

 

[FamilyTeam]

You know... after hearing Dabuz talk about Rosa without Luma on stream, I'm starting to think that Smash 4's inconsistency comes from it's characters, not necessarily from other factors. Every top tier character has some huge strength balanced out by a grand and obvious weakness.

Sheik - struggles to close a stock, allowing for huge comebacks
Rosa - Success depends on whether Luma is around
Cloud - Doesn't recover sometimes
Fox - Doesn't get back to stage at all sometimes
ZSS - Everything involving her rage setups
Mario - Easily walled out
Mewtwo - The poster child for glass cannon
Ryu - Gets camped out hard

The only three top tiers I can't think of huge weaknesses like that for are Bayo, Diddy, and Marth. In that order too - Marth's disadvantage is very meh, Diddy's disadvantage is occasionally linear, and Bayo... sometimes has lag?

I get the idea of having some sort of weakness as a means to balance a game. But I don't recall any other game in the series having top tiers with weaknesses nearly as prevalent as their strengths. And I could be totally wrong about that, so people with more experience - please let me know. But from what I've seen, it looks like top tiers didn't have weaknesses nearly so exploitable in other games.

I think you're severely underestimating how bad Marcina's disadvantage sucks. There's also how hard it is for them to create space again after their little bubble has been penetrated and they're forced to play at Point Blank.

Smash 4 has one of the slowest metas I’ve seen. In part, this is due to the training mode being awful. In another part, we have a bunch of new adults that are all individually trying to figure out how to bridge the gap from amateur competitor to professional. And I mean that in terms of mentality.

I'm really glad I'm not the only one who's noticed how Smash 4's meta has been advancing at a snail's pace compared to metas of other games in general I've followed the competitive aspect of. That's been one of my biggest criticisms of the game ever since I decided to focus on labbing instead of playing.
I feel like a lot of the community isn't on the right mentality to really take this game to the next step. Even within Top Tier itself it feels like some characters are way more developed than others. That may be in part due to the community but I also think maybe the game itself might take some of the blame here. I've already theorised and came up with a rather controversial opinion that Marcina have already hit their roof and they're not getting any better than they already are, which is why I'll believe they'll eventually stagnate and drop significantly if other characters develop more than them. But that'll involve them also not having hit a roof already. Smash 4 doesn't look like the sea of possibilities other fighting games are, to me.

 

[MarioManTAW]

I don't mean to be that guy but like...

What actual European input was given to this list?

There's Tru4, though as far as I know, he's in Australia now, so I don't think that really counts.

It'd be nice if the next tier list actually pulled some data from more of the world than being a majority of US and Japan. Again, there probably is in this list, but I am just not recognising any names, so if anyone can point more names out, please do so.

There are plenty of European players that travel around as well. Notables that travel around a fair bit that I can think of off the top of my head include Cyve, Gluttony, our own Aperture... Mr. R lol?

Breakdown of voters:

Spoiler

US: Chompy, Das Koopa, Espy Rose, Illusion, kyo, Liberation, Mav, Meteor Master, Myran, Red Ryu, Sinister Slush, tri, TheReflexWonder (13)
JP: Abadango, Edge, Jucchan, Kirihara, Kisha, Kome, Kuro, Oishiitofu, Raito, Ri-ma, Ron, Sigma, T, Taiheita, takera, Tsu (16)
EU: Catana (1)
AU: Foxy, Jaice, Jdizzle, Jezmo, Luco, Poppt, Shaya, Tru4 (8)

So when they said it was mostly US, JP, and AU, they were not kidding. (Also, happy/surprised to see 4 reps from TX!)

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Bayo is a taller frame and light character she isn't durable and kill set ups work on her longer than most characters (Her Ding Dong range is like 30% ish). She also has a slight issue with killing if she doesn't get the stock with her witch twist nonsense and has to go for raw Bairs for example.

Diddy has no air speed whatsoever, if he didn't have stupid hitboxes and Monkey Flip this would be a bigger issue but it's still enough of a issue where it can definitely affect his ability to escape disadvantage. His recovery is also very vulnerable if he's hit before he can up b back to stage he is likely dead everytime.

Marth is juggle prone, has issues landing and really doesn't like it when you inside his sword bubble

I wouldn't say the top tiers are inconsistent but rather the game is balanced enough to where their strengths don't completely negate their weaknesses like broken characters do.

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

Kofu I do not know off the top of my head. I do not have access to my copy of Smash right now but if someone could test it real quick, that could give us the answer. It's not on Kurogane Hammer.

Edit: The list of voters suprised me. I was under the assumption the voters only consisted of the popular US players with a few popular players from other regions sprinkled in to try and please everyone.

I'm glad I was wrong.

I'm happy to see Shulk, Ness, and Lucas mains among the voters; I never thought they would be given a chance or considered. 4 Texas reps is awesome.

 

[Emblem Lord]

I think you're severely underestimating how bad Marcina's disadvantage sucks. There's also how hard it is for them to create space again after their little bubble has been penetrated and they're forced to play at Point Blank.

I'm really glad I'm not the only one who's noticed how Smash 4's meta has been advancing at a snail's pace compared to metas of other games in general I've followed the competitive aspect of. That's been one of my biggest criticisms of the game ever since I decided to focus on labbing instead of playing.
I feel like a lot of the community isn't on the right mentality to really take this game to the next step. Even within Top Tier itself it feels like some characters are way more developed than others. That may be in part due to the community but I also think maybe the game itself might take some of the blame here. I've already theorised and came up with a rather controversial opinion that Marcina have already hit their roof and they're not getting any better than they already are, which is why I'll believe they'll eventually stagnate and drop significantly if other characters develop more than them. But that'll involve them also not having hit a roof already. Smash 4 doesn't look like the sea of possibilities other fighting games are, to me.

Game has been out for 3 years and we live in the super fast internet/youtube/twitch streamer age.

Games evolve HYPER fast now and then slooooooooooooooooooooooooooow doooooooooooooooooooooown.

 

[Krysco]

Kofu I do not know off the top of my head. I do not have access to my copy of Smash right now but if someone could test it real quick, that could give us the answer. It's not on Kurogane Hammer.

Edit: The list of voters suprised me. I was under the assumption the voters only consisted of the popular US players with a few popular players from other regions sprinkled in to try and please everyone.

I'm glad I was wrong.

I'm happy to see Shulk, Ness, and Lucas mains among the voters; I never thought they would be given a chance or considered. 4 Texas reps is awesome.

Assuming the move lacks a sweetspot and sourspot, PK Freeze does 9% uncharged. Tested it in an actual match rather than Training just in case freshness changed the result.

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

And players thought Shiek and Game & Watch in doubles were bad. This is going to be fun.

Edit: There is no sweet or sour spots in PK Freeze.

 

[Deleted member]

I know the match up against Bayonetta and Lucas are even but who has the advantage? Either way, being even with Bayonetta helps Lucas a lot actually. Bayonetta players are getting a lot more common and Lucas is one of Bayonetta's checks. Is it because of Lucas's grab combos? Either way, Lucas having an even match up against Bayonetta is good for him in the tier list.

 

[Kofu]

And players thought Shiek and Game & Watch in doubles were bad. This is going to be fun.

Edit: There is no sweet or sour spots in PK Freeze.

They heavily nerfed Oil Panic in doubles. I haven't tested it exactly but it's probably around half damage. It's still a huge, frame 2 attack but it lacks the oomph you might want.

 

[Game7a1]

They heavily nerfed Oil Panic in doubles. I haven't tested it exactly but it's probably around half damage. It's still a huge, frame 2 attack but it lacks the oomph you might want.

It's closer to one-third of the damage. You can still get, like, high 30%'s with it but only in rare or casual settings.
But hey, you're guaranteed 18%.

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

I'm not familiar with the Bayonetta match-up for Lucas, but here is some random stuff.

• If Lucas spaces his PK Fire well, he can avoid Witch Time. If PK Fire triggers Bat Within, Bayonetta can still get hit by the second half of PK Fire if she decides to re-appear in the same spot.
• If Lucas spaces his aerials and tilts (they all have disjoints seperate from his hurtbox, including his up-air) he may be able to safely punish Bayonetta's Vair.
• Lucas can poke Bayonetta with Zair unless the Bayonetta player knows to Witch Time it. If that happens, Lucas can try to mix it up with PK Fire.

Lucas's grab combos seems like it is the thread's reasoning for Bayonetta vs Lucas as I have seen it brought up in the past.

This is not the gif I was looking for but here is a example of the match-up on Final Destination.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

And here is a Mega Man one I ran across while looking for Bayonetta examples.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

There is even one for Shiek, but Twitter on mobile will not let me go back that far.